This chapter begins by examining the predestinarian orthodoxy, codified by the confessions of Dort and Westminster, that Puritans brought to America. As Calvinists, Puritans insisted on unconditional ...
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This chapter begins by examining the predestinarian orthodoxy, codified by the confessions of Dort and Westminster, that Puritans brought to America. As Calvinists, Puritans insisted on unconditional election—the counter to the Arminian position that God elected persons conditionally, or based on his foresight of their faith—but they disagreed on the logic of God's electing decrees. Thus arose the debate between supralapsarians and infralapsarians over whether God's electing choice came before or after his decrees of Creation and the Fall. The concept of the covenant, which demanded a response to God even in the face absolute predestination, introduced another layer of complexity. The chapter then turns to the covenant's everyday consequences for individuals, revisiting the question (made famous by sociologist Max Weber) of whether predestination engendered agony or ecstasy. In fact, Puritanism indoctrinated both—an elusive hybrid of anxiety and assurance.Less

The Agony and the Ecstasy : Predestination in New England Puritanism

Peter J. Thuesen

Published in print: 2009-08-01

This chapter begins by examining the predestinarian orthodoxy, codified by the confessions of Dort and Westminster, that Puritans brought to America. As Calvinists, Puritans insisted on unconditional election—the counter to the Arminian position that God elected persons conditionally, or based on his foresight of their faith—but they disagreed on the logic of God's electing decrees. Thus arose the debate between supralapsarians and infralapsarians over whether God's electing choice came before or after his decrees of Creation and the Fall. The concept of the covenant, which demanded a response to God even in the face absolute predestination, introduced another layer of complexity. The chapter then turns to the covenant's everyday consequences for individuals, revisiting the question (made famous by sociologist Max Weber) of whether predestination engendered agony or ecstasy. In fact, Puritanism indoctrinated both—an elusive hybrid of anxiety and assurance.

The spiritual autobiographies of the early Methodist lay preachers, penned in the last decades of the eighteenth century, were memoirs of a substantial portion of their lives, interpreted in terms of ...
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The spiritual autobiographies of the early Methodist lay preachers, penned in the last decades of the eighteenth century, were memoirs of a substantial portion of their lives, interpreted in terms of evangelical conversion. By the late 1770s, evangelicals were no longer feeling their way into a genre; they were writing within a tradition, and conversion had become not only a matter of Christian initiation but also of ongoing Christian experience and identity. As Arminians, these Methodist preachers believed that one might need to renew one’s conversion. And in their accounts of entering the ministry, their experiences of Christian perfection, even in their deathbed utterances recorded by others, their narratives imitated the structure of conversion itself as an agony of travail and relief. Closely allied to one another and supervised by John Wesley, their autobiographies also represented a development from oral to written to printed narrative.Less

‘A Nail Fixed in a Sure Place’: The Lives of the ‘A Nail Fixed in a Sure Place’: The Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers

D. Bruce Hindmarsh

Published in print: 2005-03-17

The spiritual autobiographies of the early Methodist lay preachers, penned in the last decades of the eighteenth century, were memoirs of a substantial portion of their lives, interpreted in terms of evangelical conversion. By the late 1770s, evangelicals were no longer feeling their way into a genre; they were writing within a tradition, and conversion had become not only a matter of Christian initiation but also of ongoing Christian experience and identity. As Arminians, these Methodist preachers believed that one might need to renew one’s conversion. And in their accounts of entering the ministry, their experiences of Christian perfection, even in their deathbed utterances recorded by others, their narratives imitated the structure of conversion itself as an agony of travail and relief. Closely allied to one another and supervised by John Wesley, their autobiographies also represented a development from oral to written to printed narrative.

This chapter discusses four different notes on one of Chaucer's works, namely Sir Thopas. The notes discussed in this chapter are ‘An Agony in Three Fits’, ‘Listeth, Lordes’, ‘The Title Sir’, and ...
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This chapter discusses four different notes on one of Chaucer's works, namely Sir Thopas. The notes discussed in this chapter are ‘An Agony in Three Fits’, ‘Listeth, Lordes’, ‘The Title Sir’, and ‘Worly Under Wede’.Less

Four Notes on Chaucer's Sir Thopas

J.A. Burrow

Published in print: 1984-03-15

This chapter discusses four different notes on one of Chaucer's works, namely Sir Thopas. The notes discussed in this chapter are ‘An Agony in Three Fits’, ‘Listeth, Lordes’, ‘The Title Sir’, and ‘Worly Under Wede’.

This chapter looks at the reading communities formed through the personal advertisements on the newspaper's front page. Its second column came to be known in the late 19th century as the “agony ...
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This chapter looks at the reading communities formed through the personal advertisements on the newspaper's front page. Its second column came to be known in the late 19th century as the “agony column” for its emphasis on personal distress, ranging from pathetic tales of runaway husbands to plaintive cries for attention from lonely hearts. Such heartfelt pleas did not escape the attention of the school of sensation novelists, who were quick to capitalize on the criminal possibilities of the most interactive section of the newspaper through an improbable number of phony marriage announcements, misreported obituaries, and unanswered missing-persons inquiries among their fictional narratives. Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, Ellen Wood's East Lynne, and Mary Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret illustrate how the newspaper could be used to begin a second life. The misuse of advertisements in these novels taps into the at-once stimulating and disturbing implications of anonymity in modern life brought within everyone's reach through the daily press. Audiences were not just reading about other people's lives in the newspaper. They were using the newspaper to change their own.Less

The Personal Advertisements : Advertisements, Agony Columns, and Sensation Novels of the 1860s

Matthew Rubery

Published in print: 2009-08-01

This chapter looks at the reading communities formed through the personal advertisements on the newspaper's front page. Its second column came to be known in the late 19th century as the “agony column” for its emphasis on personal distress, ranging from pathetic tales of runaway husbands to plaintive cries for attention from lonely hearts. Such heartfelt pleas did not escape the attention of the school of sensation novelists, who were quick to capitalize on the criminal possibilities of the most interactive section of the newspaper through an improbable number of phony marriage announcements, misreported obituaries, and unanswered missing-persons inquiries among their fictional narratives. Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, Ellen Wood's East Lynne, and Mary Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret illustrate how the newspaper could be used to begin a second life. The misuse of advertisements in these novels taps into the at-once stimulating and disturbing implications of anonymity in modern life brought within everyone's reach through the daily press. Audiences were not just reading about other people's lives in the newspaper. They were using the newspaper to change their own.

Place matters in how Americans have responded to and sought to influence US foreign policy. The dynamic of domestic regional influence on US foreign relations was especially apparent in the American ...
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Place matters in how Americans have responded to and sought to influence US foreign policy. The dynamic of domestic regional influence on US foreign relations was especially apparent in the American South’s role in the Vietnam War. From the general public to soldiers, college students, and crucially placed political leaders, Dixie supported the war more strongly and longer than any other section of the country. As had been the southern practice since the 1780s, the South’s bellicose foreign policy stance was grounded in distinctly regional political and economic interests, racial views, ideological and historical assumptions, and religious values. Although Dixie’s support helped to sustain an increasingly unpopular war under both Presidents Johnson and Nixon, many of these same regional interests and values spawned an articulate minority opposition to the war. These antiwar protests, together with the war’s mounting agony, led even the South and its prowar leaders to tire of the conflict by the early 1970s.Less

The American South and the Vietnam War : Belligerence, Protest, and Agony in Dixie

Joseph A. Fry

Published in print: 2015-05-27

Place matters in how Americans have responded to and sought to influence US foreign policy. The dynamic of domestic regional influence on US foreign relations was especially apparent in the American South’s role in the Vietnam War. From the general public to soldiers, college students, and crucially placed political leaders, Dixie supported the war more strongly and longer than any other section of the country. As had been the southern practice since the 1780s, the South’s bellicose foreign policy stance was grounded in distinctly regional political and economic interests, racial views, ideological and historical assumptions, and religious values. Although Dixie’s support helped to sustain an increasingly unpopular war under both Presidents Johnson and Nixon, many of these same regional interests and values spawned an articulate minority opposition to the war. These antiwar protests, together with the war’s mounting agony, led even the South and its prowar leaders to tire of the conflict by the early 1970s.

In the book of Job three forms of the theodicy have been distinguished, each supplying a vindication or justification of the ways of God to suffering humanity. First, there is the justification ...
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In the book of Job three forms of the theodicy have been distinguished, each supplying a vindication or justification of the ways of God to suffering humanity. First, there is the justification derived from a belief in an inscrutable deity, whose providence is not searchable and whose dispensations must patiently be borne on the grounds that they are serving ends beyond the grasp of mortal minds. Second, there is an argument founded on a postulate that nothing happens or subsists in the world beyond the horizon of the divine plan; hence the apparently most anomalous and heartbreaking events are dispensations made according to an ultimately coherent system. Third, there is the deixis of the pointing finger, which spells out each item in the creation as part of a stupendous whole and inspires the diffident audience with terror that modulates to wonder and delighted acquiescence. However, it is the second position that dominates the other two because it formalizes the plenary conception of all theodicies by deducing it from an invulnerable first principle linking the divine to the mortal world. This chapter argues that the book of Job develops as a contest between the universal equity posited by the comforters, and the bare particulars of an unresolved personal agony listed by Job. The broad causal sweep of theodicy is measured against a complaint consisting in discrete notations of an actual set of circumstances for which no cause can be found.Less

Public Theodicies and Private Particulars

Jonathan Lamb

Published in print: 1995-08-03

In the book of Job three forms of the theodicy have been distinguished, each supplying a vindication or justification of the ways of God to suffering humanity. First, there is the justification derived from a belief in an inscrutable deity, whose providence is not searchable and whose dispensations must patiently be borne on the grounds that they are serving ends beyond the grasp of mortal minds. Second, there is an argument founded on a postulate that nothing happens or subsists in the world beyond the horizon of the divine plan; hence the apparently most anomalous and heartbreaking events are dispensations made according to an ultimately coherent system. Third, there is the deixis of the pointing finger, which spells out each item in the creation as part of a stupendous whole and inspires the diffident audience with terror that modulates to wonder and delighted acquiescence. However, it is the second position that dominates the other two because it formalizes the plenary conception of all theodicies by deducing it from an invulnerable first principle linking the divine to the mortal world. This chapter argues that the book of Job develops as a contest between the universal equity posited by the comforters, and the bare particulars of an unresolved personal agony listed by Job. The broad causal sweep of theodicy is measured against a complaint consisting in discrete notations of an actual set of circumstances for which no cause can be found.

Derek Parfit, in On What Matters, argues that all subjective accounts of normative reasons for action are false. This chapter focuses on his “Agony Argument.” The first premise of the Agony Argument ...
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Derek Parfit, in On What Matters, argues that all subjective accounts of normative reasons for action are false. This chapter focuses on his “Agony Argument.” The first premise of the Agony Argument is that we necessarily have current reasons to avoid our own future agony. Its second premise is that subjective accounts cannot vindicate this fact. So, the argument concludes, subjective accounts must be rejected. This chapter accepts the first premise of this argument and that it is valid. The main thesis of this chapter is that subjectivists can account for our reasons to get pleasure and avoid agony. The chapter concludes that the Agony Argument does not justify the rejection of subjective accounts. The chapter also examines Parfit's understanding of the distinction between objective and subjective theories. The chapter claims Parfit offers a surprisingly narrow understanding of subjectivism such that even if his critique were successful, this would be bad news for fewer theories than we might have thought. Finally, the chapter replies to some possible worries about the arguments of this chapter.Less

Parfit's Case against Subjectivism 1

David Sobel

Published in print: 2011-06-30

Derek Parfit, in On What Matters, argues that all subjective accounts of normative reasons for action are false. This chapter focuses on his “Agony Argument.” The first premise of the Agony Argument is that we necessarily have current reasons to avoid our own future agony. Its second premise is that subjective accounts cannot vindicate this fact. So, the argument concludes, subjective accounts must be rejected. This chapter accepts the first premise of this argument and that it is valid. The main thesis of this chapter is that subjectivists can account for our reasons to get pleasure and avoid agony. The chapter concludes that the Agony Argument does not justify the rejection of subjective accounts. The chapter also examines Parfit's understanding of the distinction between objective and subjective theories. The chapter claims Parfit offers a surprisingly narrow understanding of subjectivism such that even if his critique were successful, this would be bad news for fewer theories than we might have thought. Finally, the chapter replies to some possible worries about the arguments of this chapter.

Love governed by the heart, in the context of possible dictations by society, is what Goethe calls elective affinities. While it is true that the ...
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Love governed by the heart, in the context of possible dictations by society, is what Goethe calls elective affinities. While it is true that the celebration of a passionate and an immediate response to another's affection can bring forth positive feelings, these decisions have repercussions or unexpected results or what this chapter terms as uninvited agonies. This chapter discusses the emotional features, whether positive or negative, of valued relationships and their significance to health. Connection between social network and health outcomes is established through the analysis based on numerous data references. Information is mainly gathered through survey questionnaires about people's evaluation of their overall well-being in relation to the bad and good emotions associated with their affiliations. Although several inquiries are geared toward the extent of social assistance and the quality of emotional support, less attention is given to these issues. Conclusions involve the importance of facilitating emotional intelligence and promoting supportive parenting skills to long-term health and psychological benefits.Less

Carol D. RyffBurton H. SingerEdgar WingGayle Dienberg Love

Published in print: 2001-05-24

Love governed by the heart, in the context of possible dictations by society, is what Goethe calls elective affinities. While it is true that the celebration of a passionate and an immediate response to another's affection can bring forth positive feelings, these decisions have repercussions or unexpected results or what this chapter terms as uninvited agonies. This chapter discusses the emotional features, whether positive or negative, of valued relationships and their significance to health. Connection between social network and health outcomes is established through the analysis based on numerous data references. Information is mainly gathered through survey questionnaires about people's evaluation of their overall well-being in relation to the bad and good emotions associated with their affiliations. Although several inquiries are geared toward the extent of social assistance and the quality of emotional support, less attention is given to these issues. Conclusions involve the importance of facilitating emotional intelligence and promoting supportive parenting skills to long-term health and psychological benefits.

This chapter deals with the general practice of anthropology and fieldwork. Various accounts of fieldwork from diverse and converging angles make the case for a fresh look at fieldwork encounters. ...
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This chapter deals with the general practice of anthropology and fieldwork. Various accounts of fieldwork from diverse and converging angles make the case for a fresh look at fieldwork encounters. They depart from some of the more traditional, nonreflective practices of ethnography, as well as from the current and pervasive practices in the discipline based on variants of what is characterized as “textualism,” thus moving toward a critical ethnography that makes the agony of fieldwork integral to knowledge production. Finally, the works of different fieldworkers do not subsume the fieldwork encounter under theory, but examine its articulation with theory and context. Beyond everything else, episodes of fieldwork encounters situate the anthropologist in vulnerability. Such placement carries risks but also makes the anthropologist alert to a kind of critical questioning in real time that is indispensable for those seeking to appreciate the dynamics of contexts in which meanings unfold.Less

Afterthoughts: The Experience and Agony of Fieldwork

Hammoudi AbdellahJohn Borneman

Published in print: 2009-02-04

This chapter deals with the general practice of anthropology and fieldwork. Various accounts of fieldwork from diverse and converging angles make the case for a fresh look at fieldwork encounters. They depart from some of the more traditional, nonreflective practices of ethnography, as well as from the current and pervasive practices in the discipline based on variants of what is characterized as “textualism,” thus moving toward a critical ethnography that makes the agony of fieldwork integral to knowledge production. Finally, the works of different fieldworkers do not subsume the fieldwork encounter under theory, but examine its articulation with theory and context. Beyond everything else, episodes of fieldwork encounters situate the anthropologist in vulnerability. Such placement carries risks but also makes the anthropologist alert to a kind of critical questioning in real time that is indispensable for those seeking to appreciate the dynamics of contexts in which meanings unfold.

This chapter is written from the perspective of someone who claims never to have suffered from depression. When asked if he has ever been depressed, the author of this chapter reports that he ...
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This chapter is written from the perspective of someone who claims never to have suffered from depression. When asked if he has ever been depressed, the author of this chapter reports that he responds vaguely. He states he can be evasive and pompous, insisting that he does not think he satisfies all the clinical criteria. The reason why he is reluctant to accept the notion that he is depressed is not because he feels ashamed about being depressive. On the contrary, he feels that he does not belong to the community of the depressed—an elite club with a black, glorious fellowship of agony in which he cannot share. Another reason is that depression and its symptoms are impossible to describe, even if the will to describe them is intense. No metaphors or similes are sufficient to describe what happens. The author says he is better off with the unnamed and unnamable. He concludes by suggesting that the least unsatisfactory picture is of auto-immune disease: self-consumption.Less

On Being Not Depressed

Charles Foster

Published in print: 2017-08-31

This chapter is written from the perspective of someone who claims never to have suffered from depression. When asked if he has ever been depressed, the author of this chapter reports that he responds vaguely. He states he can be evasive and pompous, insisting that he does not think he satisfies all the clinical criteria. The reason why he is reluctant to accept the notion that he is depressed is not because he feels ashamed about being depressive. On the contrary, he feels that he does not belong to the community of the depressed—an elite club with a black, glorious fellowship of agony in which he cannot share. Another reason is that depression and its symptoms are impossible to describe, even if the will to describe them is intense. No metaphors or similes are sufficient to describe what happens. The author says he is better off with the unnamed and unnamable. He concludes by suggesting that the least unsatisfactory picture is of auto-immune disease: self-consumption.